Last week over at CulturallyOurs, I shared a very special episode. An episode where I had the tables turned on me and was interviewed by my friend Cheri Dost. Cheri took me down memory lane as she asked me about my childhood and what life was like growing up in Bombay, India. If you haven’t heard the episode yet, go take a listen.
As part of the episode, I asked all of you what were some of your core memories of life or family and home? And if there are certain experiences that brought you right back to a place and time of your past?
Aparna Paul Jain from An Indian Accent shared this beautiful memory of her home in Calcutta. Thank you Aparna, I love how you have incorporated your past with your present.
From Aparna,
Home -the smell of my mom’s sari during the day – the ends would always feel a little damp and I could smell what she has been cooking. My favorite window by the balcony, watching the rains or sitting with my favorite book in the winter sun, the anticipation of the festivals around October – the list is unending. Home, now, are the dogs running to me when I open the front door, the feel of the familiar floor when I take my shoes off – yes, my toes have a say in what feels like home – what can I say!
To paint the picture of what I call home now – I am a Bengali married to a Punjabi and to those who know of these two “breeds”, you have to agree that, geographically and culturally, we cannot be further apart. The only thing that binds us traditionally are Hindi movies and the songs we hummed to our first crushes.
But the last few years a little something changed in this disjointed set up. My daughter who absolutely loves her mac and cheese and very cheesy cheese pizza started liking Bengali food. And I cannot take credit for it except that I accompany her on the flights to my home in India. The food I cooked in Chicago did not taste anything like what I had growing up. I took the safe route in the kitchen and picked up recipes from the internet that included the word ‘Punjabi’ in it. Like Hindi movies, often that’s the common food that ties a lot of Indians together even if we are not from Punjab.
But during our trips back home, my daughter started picking her favorites. Food that I craved when I was missing home but was too lazy to figure out how to cook, food I loathed while growing up – even the kind of rice I fussed about – she loved it all. And suddenly, home and Calcutta was not confined to the gazillion photographs I have all over the house, it was the food I attempted to experiment with. Oh, there is a huge emphasis on the word ‘attempt’. I have a questionable sense of smell and taste so cooking is not intuitive for me.
However, it has been fun digging up not so common recipes in seemingly boring recipe books, calling up aunts and messaging friends, scouting the internet for ideas to make the food taste like your favorite childhood joint, adding both the personalized and traditional touches to tried and tested recipes. It is a little trip I embark on now and then.
This week is the biggest festival in eastern India – Durga Puja. It spans 5 days and what we do to celebrate has nothing to do with spirituality but everything to do with food. All kinds of food the ‘eat till you drop dead’ kind of gluttony. So in my attempt to recreate that spirit at home, I call over a few friends and cook up a feast (as close I can get to one). The menu cannot be short and guests have to be overfed.
This week I pretended to be a super chef and ground the fresh spices and shopped for the ingredients I don’t usually care to stock up on the rest of the year. I got out my favorite sari and entertained guests because that is me living a part of the story I grew up in and letting my daughter, husband and friends get a peek into world where overfeeding is just a way of playing the gracious host.
{Credit: Words and photos by photographer Aparna Paul Jain}
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